Naomi Oreskes’s talk on ‘Merchants of Doubt’ at BYU

Recently Naomi Oreskes historian of science and author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming talked at at the Kennedy Center as part of a special series of talks sponsored by The Nature Conservancy and BYU’s Environmental Ethics Initiative (which I’m involved with). It’s a wonderful talk about the reasons why Climate Change became politicized and how nearly half of Americans were convinced to ignore or not believe in a scientific consensus that the planet is warming and that humans are the cause. The short version is extobacco company scientists after years of spinning the story that tobacco did not cause cancer, switched to climate change after being hired by big oil in a obfuscation campaign. An astonishing and troubling story.